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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28321842">through realm of shadow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen'>mornen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bathing/Washing, Biting, Existential Angst, First Meetings, Hook-Up, I May Write More, Legolas has a gender that mortals do not have a word for, Light Angst, Loneliness, Mirkwood, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Legolas, Oral Sex, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Quest, Scars, Sex, Sharing a Bed, Slapping, Smut, Spells &amp; Enchantments, Spider Silk - Freeform, Strangers, Unbraiding, Undressing, Unexplained Background Details, Vaginal Sex, Wilderness, but Aragorn is used to elves, hair is important, no bed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:01:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,497</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28321842</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Legolas is Aragorn's guide through Mirkwood. </p><p>***</p><p>‘Your legs are so long,’ Legolas says. He hasn’t lain down again. </p><p>Aragorn nods. He isn’t committed to a conversation. He is listening to the rain. It’s been a long time since he was last in company. He keeps forgetting to speak or even acknowledge Legolas’s existence. </p><p>‘What are you thinking?’ Legolas asks.</p><p>Legolas stares at him with eyes that are too bright, too large. But his smile is gentle, easing. He is a prince. He is young. What does he know of the outside world?</p><p>Aragorn isn’t old yet, but he feels old. He broke his ankle three years ago, and it will never heal right. The knee on the same leg has gone bad, aching inside of him, and he is finding grey in his hair.</p><p>Legolas is older than him, so much older, so much younger. He is bright and strange and dangerous and kind. His hair is braided again and again. His fingers are too long.</p><p>‘Nothing will hurt us here,’ Legolas says. That could be true. But it isn’t. There are memories and nightmares moving around in his mind and making every shadow into a threat. The great trees could come tumbling down.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aragorn | Estel/Legolas Greenleaf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>137</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. say my name</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rain is hard on the roof of the hut. The hut is all roof. Eight large beams lean together at a point in the top. Between them run smaller beams, and then there is wood, pitched with wood tar to keep out the weather. There is one door, no windows, a bit of space at the very top of the building where the beams meet to let out the smoke from the fire that is built in the centre.</p><p>Rain drizzles down sometimes through the gaps, sending up a hiss as it hits the fire. Aragorn sits on one of the benches built along the walls. All of the benches are too small for him to lie on, and the shape of the hut prevents him from lying across two benches. The floor is earth. He’s made a bed on it, curled around the fire, but he hasn’t lain on it yet.</p><p>Legolas lies on one of the benches across the fire from him, legs curled up to fit. He stares at the fire, not at Aragorn. A braid falls across his face, and he doesn’t move it. Aragorn doesn’t know if he’s asleep. He doesn’t know how long he’s sat, hunched over, listening to the rain. The fire is growing low. He will add fire to it soon.</p><p>Legolas stares at him across the fire. He isn’t asleep then, or he woke when Aragorn stirred.</p><p>‘Can’t sleep?’ he asks. His voice sounds louder than usual as it bounces off the close wooden walls, but still the rain muffles it.</p><p>‘Yeah. I guess. I haven’t tried.’ Aragorn doesn’t know if that’s completely true. He made the bed. He just hasn’t lain in it.</p><p>Aragorn adds wood to the fire. They have enough for the rest of the night, and then they’ll go on in the morning. There’s wood stacked beneath a lean to. There are huts in the woods. The woods are as dark in the day as they are in night. He did need a guide through Mirkwood.</p><p>Legolas stands, leaning forward so as not to hit his head until he is close to the fire and then stands straight. He holds his hands out to the fire, warming them. The light dances over his face, casts shadows up over it. The trees outside creak in the wind. The forest is strange. The elves are strange. There’s something dark and drowsy creeping across the earthen floor, a shadow from outside, though there is no light outside. No light to cast a shadow.</p><p>Legolas stares at him with eyes that are too bright, too large. But his smile is gentle, easing. He is a prince. He is young. What does he know of the outside world?</p><p>Aragorn isn’t old yet, but he feels old. He broke his ankle three years ago, and it will never heal right. The knee on the same leg has gone bad, aching inside of him, and he is finding grey in his hair.</p><p>Legolas is older than him, so much older, so much younger. He is bright and strange and dangerous and kind. His hair is braided again and again. His fingers are too long.</p><p>‘Nothing will hurt us here,’ Legolas says. That could be true. But it isn’t. There are memories and nightmares fucking around in his mind and making every shadow into a threat. The great trees could come tumbling down.</p><p>Aragorn’s never seen a tree tumble, but he’s seen them fall, crash. They are strong, tall, deeply rooted, but the rain is coming down hard. The earth could grow soft.</p><p>‘Your bed,’ Legolas says. ‘The rain.’</p><p>Aragorn looks down at it. The roof-walls might protect them from the rain, but rain is starting to creep along the edges of the earthen floor.</p><p>‘Oh fuck.’ Aragorn drags his bed up off the floor. He shoves it onto the bench. He’ll have to sleep sitting up.</p><p>‘If you put your ass to the joint,’ Legolas says. ‘You could sleep like a hinge.’</p><p>‘Ass to the joint,’ Aragorn repeats. But he lies down like that, bent at the waist.</p><p>‘Your legs are so long,’ Legolas says. He hasn’t lain down again.</p><p>Aragorn nods. He isn’t committed to a conversation. He is listening to the rain. It’s been a long time since he was last in company. He keeps forgetting to speak or even acknowledge Legolas’s existence.</p><p>‘What are you thinking?’ Legolas asks.</p><p>‘I don’t know,’ Aragorn says, because the real answer is thinking about empty days and empty nights, all spent alone, only broken by some killing, some saving, some new misery to brand into his brain. Here’s the memory of that girl you couldn’t save in time. (Which time, Estel?)</p><p>It’s like that, isn’t it? Again and again. Remember your mistakes more than your victories. Sometimes they aren’t even mistakes. Sometimes you’re just not strong enough: Can take out a squadron of orcs alone, swim in the sea for seven days with a sword, but you can’t control time, so it marches on, an army you can never conquer.</p><p>‘Aragorn?’</p><p>Aragorn starts at his name. He isn’t used to hearing it. He’s always some name or another – Strider, Longshanks, That Fucking Ranger.</p><p>Aragorn sits up.</p><p>Legolas steps around the fire. His eyes don’t look as bright now. His feet are bare on the earthen floor.</p><p>‘Don’t you get cold?’ Aragorn asks.</p><p>Legolas places his hand on Aragorn’s arm just above his wrist, where his sleeve has ridden up. His skin is warm, his touch soft. His fingers are strong, calloused. Aragorn draws in a quick breath through his nose. It’s just one touch, one touch on his arm, but it’s so much more than he’s had in so long. He mimics the gesture, placing his hand on Legolas’s arm, just below his elbow. His shirt is spider silk.</p><p>Legolas smiles, and Aragorn draws him quickly onto his lap, hands on his waist. Legolas is swift. He steadies himself against Aragorn’s chest and balances himself, straddled over his lap, kneeling on the bench, on Aragorn’s thin bed. Aragorn kisses his shoulder through the spider silk shirt, silver-white.</p><p>Legolas kisses his cheek. Aragorn thinks for a moment he’s forgotten what a kiss is like. It’s soft, this one, and warm. He undoes the brooch holding Legolas’s shirt closed on the top. He presses the fabric aside over his collarbone. Legolas is small-boned like most Silvan elves. Aragorn trails his fingers down his chest, over his small breast, down across his stomach, feeling the slip of the silk, the strength of his muscles.</p><p>Aragorn’s head is bent against the slope of the roof. The floor is growing wet. The rain falls hard. There is no practical way for any of this, whatever it will be.</p><p>Aragorn kisses Legolas’s lips. He holds his head gently by the chin, his other hand now on his back. He slips his hand beneath Legolas’s shirt, runs it up his back. There is a long scar on his back. Aragorn does not ask about it. He lifts Legolas’s shirt, and Legolas’s hands drop from his shoulders and then lift, so Aragorn pulls the shirt off him. He runs his hand over his hair, but leaves the braids alone. They aren’t in love. They barely know each other. They don’t know if they will meet again.</p><p>‘Take your shirt off,’ Legolas says.</p><p>Aragorn pulls it off. The wood is a bit rough against his back. He leans away from it, gripping Legolas tight in his arms. The fire hisses as the rain falls.</p><p>Aragorn kisses the Wood Elf’s neck and his shoulder. He kisses a freckle just below his shoulder. He kisses his arm from shoulder to fingertip. He kisses the back of his hand and his palm, each finger, his wrist. He doesn’t want to let go of him, ever. Because he is soft and strong and strange, and his skin is warm, and he’s a closeness that Aragorn has forgotten.</p><p>He wishes they had a bed, a real bed, to lie upon, or a floor that was not wet, starting to turn from dry earth to clay mud, or a bed of moss, a field of grass, even warm stones. But they have the small hut with the close walls, the roof-walls, the earthen floor, the smoke, the fire, the tattoo of the rain, and the creaking of the trees that could crush them both as the wind wails.</p><p>Legolas wears leggings that tie at the hips. Aragorn undoes the ties and slides them off along with his silk pants. There are white scars on his thigh. Aragorn does not ask about those either. He kisses the bruise on his arm. He kisses the pink of new forming skin on his chest. He kisses his nipple and sucks on it and holds him naked in his arms.</p><p>Legolas draws his fingers through Aragorn’s hair. It catches on the tangles that Aragorn will cut out later. He moans softly. He hisses softer than the fire as the rain still falls into it.</p><p>‘You’re beautiful,’ Aragorn says, to say something, to test his voice and see if this is a dream.</p><p>
  <em>Why test a beautiful dream, Estel?</em>
</p><p>Legolas runs his fingers down Aragorn’s chest, across his tattoo: the Tree of Gondor.</p><p>
  <em>A stupid mistake, Estel. Why hide who you are and then identify yourself with something irreversible, that cannot be hidden when you are stripped? (As you would be stripped.)</em>
</p><p>Legolas’s touch is light. He stops the touch just above Aragorn’s navel and then runs his hand up again. Aragorn seizes his hand to kiss it. He pulls him lower in his arms to kiss his ear and suck on it. Legolas whines softly.</p><p>‘Ai,’ he whispers. ‘Mm.’</p><p>Aragorn tugs gently on his earlobe. This is generic. A thing most elves like. He’s lain with more men than elves. They’re easier to figure out, more direct. A quick ‘what do you want’ and ‘how do you want it?’</p><p>Elves have dances, gestures, unspoken rules. They tumble and kiss and more often than not, they pull away, having enough of it. They’ll run off to touch themselves, leave you to yourself, sometimes put you to sleep if they don’t happen to trust you enough.</p><p>Now there is nowhere to run, because not even the Prince of Mirkwood will risk the night in a winter rain this far into the forest. But still, he could put Aragorn to sleep, just a soft flash, and leave him with pretty enough dreams.</p><p>Still Aragorn murmurs, ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ against the side of the wood elf’s face, against his ear, kissing his soft skin as he speaks.</p><p>Legolas laughs at this, but his eyes are still too big and too wild when Aragorn looks at him again. The rain sounds half solid now, coming down as sleet. Maybe the ground will freeze. It is terrible switching always between freezing and rain and freezing rain.</p><p>‘You can fuck me,’ Legolas says. ‘I’m not scared of Men.’</p><p>His voice and his eyes have a danger. He squeezes Aragorn’s cock through his leggings, just a bit too tight. Aragorn draws in a sharp breath, and Legolas smiles. But he lets go and unbuttons his leggings. Then he holds Aragorn’s cock gently and strokes at the head with this thumb.</p><p>‘Are you going to keep those on?’</p><p>Aragorn glances down at his leggings and boots. He wants to keep them on. The floor is still wet. Legolas is not touching the floor, but Aragorn’s feet are still on it.</p><p>Aragorn nods.</p><p>‘Practical,’ the Prince of Mirkwood says and then slides off his lap, from his arms, onto his knees on the earthen floor. He sucks his cock without being asked to, and does nothing more than stare up at him when Aragorn starts to undo one braid. His eyes glint green.</p><p>Aragorn undoes three braids, enough to get his hand into his hair, enough to run his fingers through it. Legolas breathes out. He has a whisper of a sigh.</p><p>‘Do you want more?’</p><p>Aragorn nods his head. His words catch in his throat anyway.</p><p>Legolas sucks on his cock, and studies his face as he does it. Aragorn can’t begin to guess what he is searching for. Maybe it is nothing more than what he responds to. Maybe it is a play to see what power he has over him. A hundred thoughts flash through Aragorn’s mind in a second. He knows he thinks too much. He pushes away the thought that chides him for it.</p><p>Legolas runs his hand over Aragorn’s stomach. He rests it just above his hip and lowers his eyes. When he looks up again, he isn’t searching hard for anything. Aragorn unweaves the rest of his braids.</p><p>‘I’m good with hair,’ he promises, his voice weak. Legolas makes no reply. He grabs at Aragorn’s hand and drags it down against his breast. Aragorn takes hold of it, squeezes it. He pulls lightly on the nipple and then presses his palm to the centre, moving his hand in a small circle, his fingers curled against the curve of his breast.</p><p>‘You are so beautiful,’ he says.</p><p>Legolas presses against his hand. Aragorn plays with the other breast. He moves Legolas’s head gently by hair, guiding his motions faster. Legolas relaxes into it. He stares up at him as Aragorn fucks his mouth, slowly, then a bit faster, as the sleet comes down thudding on the roof, on the walls. The fire puts out more smoke. Legolas raises one hand, palm up, and Aragorn stops.</p><p>Legolas stands. He brushes as the bits of mud on his legs with his hand.</p><p>‘I’ll get it.’ Aragorn wipes the mud off with the outside of his cloak. Legolas nods a thank you.</p><p>‘May I?’ Aragorn says, reaching for him. Legolas places Aragorn’s hand on his hip. He shifts. Aragorn slides his finger between his legs.</p><p>‘All right,’ Legolas says.</p><p>Aragorn lifts him easily, hands on his waist. He turns him around though. He sits close to the edge of the wooden bench, so that his head is away from the roof, and guides Legolas backwards onto his lap, legs spread.</p><p>‘All right,’ Legolas says again, and Aragorn starts to fuck him. Legolas’s hair tumbles in tight waves down his back. It moves and parts as Aragorn lifts Legolas up, lifts his own hips. The scar is there, a white line down his spine, then it’s covered again. Aragorn doesn’t ask. Legolas breathes softly, but there’s a soft little whine at the end of each breath, very high, just an, ‘ah,’ or an ‘ai.’</p><p>The wood elf is tight and wet, and his skin is beautiful, and his hair is shining, and Aragorn keeps one hand gripping at his waist to lift and move him, guide him, and lets his other hand wander his body, over his chest, his stomach, rubbing softly between his legs.</p><p>‘Mm,’ Legolas says. ‘Oh, Aragorn.’</p><p>Aragorn kisses the nape of his neck. No one has ever called him Aragorn during sex, he notes, a note that could spiral into more thoughts, but he closes them away because Legolas’s voice is a distraction, and he moves so beautifully up and down Aragorn’s cock. And he says his name over and over, softly.</p><p>‘Aragorn, Aragorn, Aragorn,’ as the fire hisses, as the sleet turns back into rain, as Aragorn finds a rhythm as steady as the beat of the rain, as the beat of his heart.</p><p>He rubs Legolas with two fingers in a circle, and Legolas shifts his hips to the touch, pressing against it or pressing away, and then he stops speaking, and his breath becomes faster until it comes out in five low shudders, and his body shudders with them, stilling for a moment.</p><p>‘Ai,’ he says. He sinks a bit in Aragorn’s arms, and Aragorn lifts him into his arms completely, and stands. He holds the wood elf against the roof, against the wall, bent down towards him, and he understands, and wraps his legs around Aragorn’s waist.</p><p>Aragorn fucks him standing, and he surges with pride at his strength, even with the support of the wall, even in the moment, with the elf kissing his neck or ear or neck again, limbs wrapped around him. He presses up into the elf, feeling the bits of cold rain that hit his left shoulder as they fall from the roof, and the elf holds onto him, and his hair falls around his face, and his hair falls across Aragorn’s chest, and hides his tattoo, but the elf shudders again and says, ‘Aragorn,’ again. And says, ‘Aragorn. Aragorn. Aragorn.’ Until finally Aragorn sets him down because he doesn’t want to drop him in the end and turns him around again. Legolas presses his hands to the wall, and Aragorn fucks him from behind, and Legolas says nothing but his soft ‘ah’s’ and ‘ai’s’ and high moans.</p><p>Aragorn comes inside of him, his grip on his breast and his hip tightening hard enough that Legolas’s breath catches in his throat. And for a moment Aragorn sees a spray of stars behind his closed eyes. He’s hot, flushed, and he finally notices that he is sweating. He sinks onto the wooden bench, onto his thin bed. His throat is dry.</p><p>Legolas drinks from a water skin and hands it to Aragorn. Aragorn takes it and drinks. The water is sweet. Legolas leans closer to the fire, and Aragorn does too. He wipes at his sweat with his cloak. He runs his hand through his hair, and it catches on the tangles he will cut out someday.</p><p>Legolas dresses quietly. Aragorn drinks more water and then dresses too. He lies folded on the bench. He studies Legolas’s face over the fire. The fire is growing low. Legolas adds wood to it. They stare at each other, both silent.</p><p>Finally, Legolas stands. He bends close to Aragorn and kisses his cheek, just once, and then lies down on the bed he had made on the bench.</p><p>The rain turns to ice on the roof. The trees creak above them. All around, the wind cries. There is a shadow on the floor from outside, even though, outside, there is no light.</p><p>Legolas gives him a gentle smile.</p><p>‘Try to sleep,’ he says. ‘Nothing will come in here to harm you.’</p><p>Aragorn sleeps, and when he does, he dreams of springtime. Aragorn wakes, and when he does, Legolas is there, his hair unbraided, lying golden soft around his head.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. kiss your eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Legolas kneels on the floor in front of Aragorn. His legs are bare, his feet. Aragorn had to stop asking him if he’s cold.</p><p>Aragorn runs the brush through Legolas’s golden-brown hair. It looks almost like flames in the light of the low fire, the gold picking up the brightness of fire, the brown tempering it, deepening it.</p><p>Aragorn woke after Legolas and they ate in silence and washed in silence and Legolas handed him a brush in silence and knelt in front of him, and still they have not spoken.</p><p>Aragorn rests his hand on Legolas’s head so that the brush will not pull. He draws the brush down.</p><p>It is morning, but there is no light. The wind is not silent, but the rain has stopped. The fire is louder now, their breaths too. Legolas’s hair slips over the spider-silk of his shirt, falling over his shoulder. Aragorn touches the nape of his neck where his long scar starts.</p><p>Legolas looks over his shoulder, his eyes open wide. Aragorn shakes his head. He won’t ask. He won’t touch it again. He parts Legolas’s hair and begins the braiding.</p><p>Legolas’s hair grows darker as he braids it, the firelight not able to fully permeate the tightness of the braids. He ties many braids and weaves them up close to the back of Legolas’s head. It is a battle style. There should be no battles, but that is not promised.</p><p>He touches Legolas’s shoulder when he is finished. Legolas stands and brushes off his legs, though there is not much dirt clinging to them. He pulls on his leggings and laces them carefully. He closes his shirt with his brooch and slips a green woollen tunic on over it. This he buttons on one side and ties a belt over.</p><p>Aragorn packs up the rest of his things. They will leave now. He draws on his cloak. Legolas kicks out the fire and whispers a word to it that Aragorn either didn’t hear correctly or doesn’t know.</p><p>Legolas opens the door of the dark hut onto darkness.</p><p>‘We are always watched,’ he says. His voice is lower than usual, but just as whispery. ‘Can you see?’</p><p>‘I see eyes if that’s what you mean,’ Aragorn says. There are eyes in the forest. There are always eyes in the forest. Some are real and some are illusions set by Thranduil. He knows this. Legolas told him. Gandalf didn’t.</p><p>Legolas looks back at him, and his eyes are a dim green in the shadows of the woods. There must be light far above them, beyond the trees and behind the clouds.</p><p>Legolas lights a lantern. He moves swiftly before Aragorn, finding their way back to the Elves’ path they follow from the overgrown path leading to the hut they slept in. Aragorn follows after him, following the light of a Wood Elf into an enchanted forest. These are the things the children of men are told not to do.</p><p>The Elves are dangerous. If you follow their light into the forest, will you ever find your way out? If you drink water from their stream, will you ever wake?</p><p>Legolas reaches back, and for a moment, his fingers brush over Aragorn’s hand. They turn left.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Legolas starts to sing as the morning grows older. It is light, gentle, so soft in the ice-covered forest. But the sound of his voice seems to warm the air about them and make the lantern burn brighter. It is like taking a stick to a sword fight and winning.</p><p>
  <em>(Are battles the only thing you can think of, Estel? Does even music become a fight to the death with you?)</em>
</p><p>‘Do you know the song?’ Legolas asks suddenly.</p><p>Aragorn shakes his head because he’s forgotten to speak again. He spends too much time alone. He spends too much time only with people torn by years of loneliness and fighting.</p><p>
  <em>(Do you become an outcast to yourself in the end, Estel? When your own thoughts and memories are unwanted, even to you, who will keep you? Who will love you?)</em>
</p><p>‘Do you want to sing?’ Legolas asks, and then, after it, say quickly: ‘You don’t have to walk behind me. This isn’t a marsh. There aren’t any bogs. You don’t have to step in my footsteps.’</p><p>Aragorn hadn’t noticed that he’d been doing just that. A habit, he supposes, from when Elladan or Elrohir would walk, Elrohir in front of him, Elladan behind, over land that was waiting to open a swift grave when the waters beneath them were cold.</p><p>He steps beside Legolas, and Legolas starts another song.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>‘Ah, this one is nicer,’ Legolas says when he opens the door to a small cabin in the deep velvet grey of the night. Pitch black turns grey. Pitch black turns into swirling lights in many colours. In Mirkwood, pitch black turns into too many eyes.</p><p>Legolas shuts the door behind them and latches it. The floor here is wooden, and the ceilings higher. There’s a small hearth and one low bed with blankets.</p><p>‘Are there a lot of these places?’ Aragorn asks.</p><p>‘Forest shelters?’ Legolas asks. ‘Of course there are. The weather can turn to death fast here, and there are many strange things.’</p><p>Aragorn nods. He’s built his fair share of wilderness huts. He touches the stones of the hearth.</p><p>‘Someone was here two nights ago. Should we expect company?’</p><p>‘I don’t know,’ Legolas answers. ‘We might get some. We might not. I wouldn’t expect company – mostly these are only used for one night unless you have settled somewhere for hunting, and usually hunters will pick the bigger ones for that.’</p><p>‘You were shy when I last met you,’ Aragorn says. ‘Three years ago.’</p><p>‘I don’t remember being shy. I didn’t have much to say.’ Legolas slips his shoes off and hangs his cloak up, spreading it out, so that it will dry. The clouds did not clear that day, and it started to rain or snow or something in between half an hour before they came to the shelter. Legolas’s clothes are dry beneath his cloak. He starts up a fire on the hearth. It builds quickly. ‘You were talking to my father mostly.’</p><p>Aragorn takes off his muddy boots and hangs his cloak up to dry beside Legolas’s. This hut doesn’t have windows either, but they aren’t much use here, and would only be a danger.</p><p>‘And you were shy before that, five years before that. When Gandalf and I stayed at your father’s halls.’</p><p>‘Why are you saying I was shy?’</p><p>He’s saying it because he wants to ask Legolas why he agreed to be his guide. He’s saying it because they fucked last night and haven’t talked about it.</p><p>Legolas picks up a bucket from beside the hearth and sets it outside to collect water. He takes the one sitting outside already in and pours it into the pot over the fire.</p><p>‘We danced together a few times,’ Legolas says. ‘When you and Gandalf stayed with us that winter.’</p><p>They did dance together. Legolas had been dressed in green and gold the first time they danced together, and it had matched his hair and eyes. He had holly in his hair. He stood close to Thranduil. And he danced like the earth itself would shift around him.</p><p>‘What are you thinking?’ Legolas asks.</p><p>‘You break the rules.’</p><p>‘Which ones?’</p><p>‘Any that you don’t think are fair.’</p><p>‘Doesn’t everyone? Don’t you?’ Legolas sits beside the fire and watches the water. ‘Won’t you do anything to make things right? Do whatever is necessary to achieve your aim?’</p><p>Aragorn leans his back to the wall and tries not to answer. He would stumble on the words. He would try to defend himself. He might lie.</p><p>‘People talk about you,’ Legolas says as if Aragorn doesn’t know. ‘What you’ve done.’</p><p>‘What have I done?’</p><p>‘I don’t know. How would I know? They’re only stories. Are any of them true? Or are they just stories?’ Legolas stares up at him. ‘Have you heard stories about me?’</p><p>
  <em>(Don’t follow an Elf into the woods, Thorongil. You’ll never make it out alive.)</em>
</p><p>‘There are many stories about the Elves.’</p><p>‘Are we beautiful and terrible? Dangerous, enchanting?’ Legolas dips a finger into the heating water. ‘A mistake?’</p><p>‘All of that and more.’</p><p>‘Are you one to make mistakes, Aragorn?’</p><p>‘I’ve made many.’</p><p>‘Do they hurt less and less?’</p><p>‘No.’</p><p>‘That’s what my father says.’ Legolas crosses his legs and wraps his arms around them, so that his knees rest against his elbows. ‘He says some things never heal. And you’re still young, but you have them. There are shadows in your eyes.’</p><p>‘I’m not young anymore,’ Aragorn says, and Legolas studies him in silence, but then nods once and stands.</p><p>He slides his arms around Aragorn’s neck and kisses the corner of his mouth. Aragorn puts his arms around him and rests his hand on the small of his back and the other on his head, over the braids that he wove that morning.</p><p>Legolas stares up at him. His eyes are kind, and young. Young like springtime.</p><p>‘You are so beautiful,’ Aragorn says. ‘Why are you my guide?’</p><p>Legolas kisses him gently. ‘Because you’ve spent too much time alone.’</p><p>‘Is that the only reason?’</p><p>Legolas presses his head to Aragorn’s shoulder.</p><p>‘Because,’ he says, ‘you danced with me. And then I made stories about you and told them to myself in the night.’ He looks up again. ‘Did you make stories about me?’</p><p>Aragorn slides his hand across Legolas’s back, slipping his clothes up just enough to touch an inch of bare skin.</p><p>‘Yes, I made stories about you.’</p><p>
  <em>(And dreams of you. And dreams of long, slow mornings and worlds without pain.)</em>
</p><p>‘Will any be true?’ Legolas asks.</p><p>‘Some already were.’</p><p>‘Do you want more?’</p><p>Aragorn doesn’t answer.</p><p>‘We should bathe,’ Legolas says.</p><p>The water boils. It is very dark outside, but shadows creep beneath the door here too. Shadows creep along the walls.</p><p>‘We should,’ Aragorn says.</p><p>Legolas undresses, placing his clothes into two piles – what must be washed and what can be left.</p><p>Aragorn undresses, facing the fire. It is warm against his skin, and he realises suddenly how cold he had been. He watches the way the flames leap towards him, as if they are drawn to him, wanting to touch him, consume him. He thinks of the spirits of fire – bordering on demons – and the kindling fire of Gandalf’s eye, so warm sometimes, and other times like an all consuming forest fire.</p><p>He washes his body with his hands, and the water is warm over his skin. It dries quickly beside the fire. Steam rises off his skin.</p><p>Legolas touches his back. His hand is wet. He runs it over Aragorn’s shoulders. His touch is gentle.</p><p>‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ he says, and that’s not what Aragorn expected him to say. It’s not what he meant to say, probably, by the way he starts when he says it.</p><p>‘What do you mean?’ Aragorn asks. He takes Legolas by the arms and turns his back to him. He starts to undo the braids he wove so carefully that morning. There is sleet on the roof. There is still sleet in Legolas’s hair. It melts.</p><p>‘My father knew Beleg,’ Legolas says, and Aragorn’s grip on his arms tightens even though he didn’t mean it to. ‘He didn’t intend to die.’</p><p>‘Few people do,’ Aragorn says.</p><p>‘My father says I should be careful. That there are things you can have and lose that will never leave you.’ Legolas looks over his shoulder again. ‘I don’t know what he means.’</p><p>‘I do,’ Aragorn says.</p><p>‘Do I want to know?’</p><p>‘I can’t answer that for you.’</p><p>‘Will I know?’</p><p>‘I hope not.’</p><p>Legolas sits on one of the beds. He does not dress. Aragorn washes their clothes and hangs them to dry. Legolas wraps himself in a blanket. He sets out food. Aragorn puts on clean clothes and eats with Legolas. Sometimes he thinks he sees eyes on the walls. Too often he turns to look for them.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>They lie together in the same bed without discussing it. It’s just that Aragorn lies down, and then Legolas lies beside him, and Aragorn holds him, and the fire watches as Aragorn runs his hands over Legolas’s body, feeling for his heartbeat and the rise and fall of his breath, the warmth of his skin, as a reminder that he is not alone.</p><p>He presses Legolas’s body close to his, feeling the shape of him, the strength of his muscles, the softness of his skin, where his scars are, his callouses, where you can feel his bones, memorising it, because he is not alone now, but soon he will be again.</p><p>He kisses the white scar on his cheek and the sharpness of his clavicle. He presses kisses to his chest and finds his hard nipple with his mouth and sucks on it. Legolas, the cabin, the whole woods, smells of pine and the decay of leaves. Somewhere that writes a tragedy.</p><p>(Please don’t let it be here.)</p><p>Aragorn presses against Legolas like he could diminish all space between them and tie them together in a space of time that will remain beautiful forever. Legolas touches Aragorn’s back and his hip and his leg and his hand, and he stares at him with wide eyes that are green and gold in the firelight, and Aragorn knows nothing and everything about him.</p><p>It is strange how this, in another life, would be just a dream of desperation and not desperation itself.</p><p>‘You have nice tits,’ Aragorn says, loud and sudden. He slaps one to watch it bounce, and Legolas laughs once. Now it feels less like desperation, even if Aragorn’s lying to himself or to both of them. He pinches Legolas’s nipple to hear him seethe and kisses him, long and slow, and Legolas shivers.</p><p>Aragorn draw Legolas on top of him. Legolas balances himself gracefully. He stares down at Aragorn. Aragorn kisses his neck and his breast.</p><p>Legolas sighs. His hair falls in sweeps of gold across Aragorn’s vision. It’s wood-wet and smelling of pine and moss, silver lichen.</p><p>‘Aragorn,’ Legolas whispers, his voice like the murmur of leaves.</p><p>Eyes gleam on the walls and disappear.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>now I'm really writing the Legolas/Aragorn content no one is asking for </p><p>(I mean unless you have a walk through the woods and fake eyes are watching you kink like Some People*)</p><p>*unspecified</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>out here supplying the legolas/aragorn content that literally no one wants 😌</p></blockquote></div></div>
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